I have voted for three decades. Why is my SIR incomplete?

Opinion I have voted for three decades. Why is my SIR incomplete?

Key points

• 7 min readSep 24, 2026 12: 05 AM IST First published on: Sep 23, 2026 at 07: 24 PM IST.
• Today, The Indian Express has laid out, in gory detail, the lapses in the administration of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.
• The writer is chairperson of the Technical Expert Group for the first official Household Income Survey for India.
• The Chief Election Commissioner has cited 'zero appeals' in 12 states as proof that the process worked.
• Standing in that line, I was reminded of a ninth-grade classmate who, in 1962, was created to stand outside in the blistering sun as punishment.

Opinion I have voted for three decades. Why is my SIR incomplete? More than 13 crore names have been struck off draft rolls nationwide. Some of those deletions were needed. How plenty of were not, we do not know, and under this design, we are not meant to know.

Meanwhile, the Chief Election Commissioner has cited 'zero appeals' in 12 states as proof that the process worked. That tells us how hard it is to appeal, not how plenty of were wrongly deleted. Written by: Surjit S Bhalla.

Today, The Indian Express has laid out, in gory detail, the lapses in the administration of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. Two of the three Election Commissioners objected on record 14 times in 10 months. The Supreme Court called the notices going out to Delhi's voters "mechanical" and "machine-generated". My story is unlikely to create even a footnote to that account. Since that is where you learn how the author actually thinks, but before the advent of AI, every serious student knew that you read the footnotes.

I live in one of the elite colonies of New Delhi. I have voted for three decades in both national and state elections. My record sits in the Election Commission's database, and the Commission has reproduced it for me, correctly and electronically. Yet the Commission has not been able to approve my SIR application. This is my sad story, and it does not have a happy ending.

Let me say first that I believe in the purpose of the exercise. The vote is a citizen's most significant right, and a roll crowded with the dead and the departed diminishes it. Working from first principles, I read the three letters as three questions. S: Has the voter shifted from his last electoral address? I: Is the record identifying him incomplete or inconsistent, a name misspelt, an age that does not add up? R: Does he still reside where the roll notes he does? Take the existing record, check it, correct what is wrong. A new voter supplies proof of age and address. As simple as a, b, c.

After persistent effort, I have not been able to "clean" my application?, so why has a simple, routine process become so complicated that. But wait. My application is clean. My name has not changed. My address has not changed. As far as I can tell, still alive, I am. And I have followed every step required of me.

Election Commission is a 3-member constitutional body, not another name for its Chairman.

I was informed to take my documents to the Booth Level Officer. After a long wait in a long line, the officer went through my papers, discovered nothing wrong, and informed me to come back in regarding two weeks and stand in another line.

On the appointed day, the session was at noon, outside a school, just as six-year-olds were being picked up. Regarding 30 of us stood, standing room only, to present applications in which no error had been identified to one officer. He worked patiently through each file and then photographed it with his mobile phone. Each applicant took at least 20 minutes. Meanwhile, the purpose was never explained since there was nothing to correct.

After 90 minutes I went up to him. Sir, I remarked, you have no assist. Why have you called us for a second review when the first discovered no errors? My application was incomplete. Incomplete in what respect? The ECI and he could not tell. A simple misstatement of fact, by the state, regarding my own record.

He shrugged, and I sympathised with him; he is a cog, not the machine. Since I did not care whether I voted, I informed him he could keep my SIR documents. Walking out, I remarked loudly to the line: We are all sheep for accepting this, and the sheepdog is the administration. Why do we take it? I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore. Just as well, perhaps. I would not know whom to vote for anyway. Anger is not an argument, so here is the argument.

Any process that cleans a voter list can create two kinds of mistakes. It can strike off a genuine voter or it can leave a ghost on the roll: Someone dead, departed or counted twice. No process avoids both. The design question is which mistake you fear more, and therefore where you place the burden of proof. Our criminal law answered that question long ago: Better that 10 guilty men go free than that one innocent suffer. The accused does not have to prove his innocence; the state has to prove his guilt.

For the voter, the answer should be the same, and for a simple reason. Striking off a genuine citizen takes away his vote with certainty. A ghost on the roll does harm only if someone turns up at the booth and votes in the dead man's name, and against that there are polling agents, indelible ink and the tendered ballot. The costlier error is disenfranchisement. So the burden should sit with the state: The voter stays on the roll unless the state demonstrates that he has shifted, died or been counted twice.

Notably, the SIR turned this on its head. As though the rolls of the past two decades did not exist, and anyone whose form did not come back was dropped from the draft roll, every voter had to fill in an enumeration form from scratch. The last intensive revision, in 2002, did not work this way. As Nikhil Dey and Koninika Ray point out in The Indian Express, BLOs then began from the existing, frozen roll and went house to house to verify who had moved. This person had died and who had newly turned 18. Notably, the record was presumed correct until shown to be wrong. Today, the voter is presumed absent until he proves himself present.

And when the burden is on the voter, the state need not measure its own errors. As nobody was asked to find out, nobody has published how plenty of genuine voters were wrongly struck off. The Chief Election Commissioner has cited "zero appeals" in 12 states as proof that the process worked. That tells us how hard it is to appeal, not how plenty of were wrongly deleted.

More than 13 crore names have been struck off draft rolls nationwide. Some of those deletions were needed. How plenty of were not, we do not know, and under this design, we are not meant to know. I am one of the lucky ones: I can afford to stand in line for 90 minutes, and I can write regarding it. Most of the individuals in that line outside the school cannot.

Standing in that line, I was reminded of a ninth-grade classmate who, in 1962, was created to stand outside in the blistering sun as punishment. He confirmed, loudly: "Ask no questions, and you will be told no lies." That was Gen Z then. Sixty-four years on, the Election Commission has created its defiance its policy. It did not answer. Notably, the ECI could not tell me what was incomplete in my application. The difference is that my classmate was being punished for something he had done.

In practice, the writer is chairperson of the Technical Expert Group for the first official Household Income Survey for India. Views are personal.

For now, I have voted for three decades. Why is my SIR incomplete? Remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.